L'écriture du scepticisme chez Montaigne: Actes des journées d'étude (15-16 novembre 2001) (review)

This ambitious collection of essays seeks to bring an interdisciplinary lens to the study of Montaigne and skepticism, where the methodology draws equally upon philosophical and literary approaches. Alain Legros states in his introduction that the conference and the collection sought to penetrate three scientific domains of Montaigne's period: theology, law, and medicine (8). The nineteen essays are clustered around four organizing themes: traces of skepticism, more contemporary intertexts or exchanges, theoretical questioning of religious dogma, and skepticism as it relates to Montaigne's lived experience.

In the first section exploring traces of skepticism, John O'Brien demonstrates how Montaigne's use of the skeptic concept of peritrope — an argument that circles around to contradict and cancel itself — is both a model of thought and a writing technique that permits the essayist to pursue exploration and inquiry without risking closure. Kirsti Sellevold finds the signs of pyrrhonism less in techniques than through modal expressions — the language — used by the essayist: peut-être, je pense que, il me semble. Montaigne admits as much in "Des boyteux." Alain Legros returns to these modal expressions — the phônai skeptikai — to show Montaigne's lingering attachment to skepticism as evidenced by the fact that he did not have the citations concerning skeptic practice covered up and overwritten on the beams of his library as he did quotations from other sources. These basic skeptical principles noting the limits of human reason coexist with sayings from Ecclesiastes extolling the wisdom of humility and castigating those who put too much faith in human reasoning.

In a convincing article, Sylvia Giocanti argues that Montaigne's pyrrhonism excludes theology from his discourse to focus on everyday practices. Following up on the essayist's reluctance to apply reason to God's domain, Mireille Habert examines the liberties taken in Montaigne's translation of Sebond's Scientia Libri Creaturarum because of his growing discomfort with Sebond's thesis that the believer should seek God's truth in nature.

The second section of the volume highlights imagined or hypothetical conversations between Montaigne and other thinkers of his century, starting with Erasmus. Jean-Claude Margolin shows that Montaigne limits opinion to the knowledge within the grasp of humankind, while Erasmus links opinion and faith in a syncretic blending of theology and philosophy. Another voice echoed in Montaigne's Essais is that of Thomas de Vio, called Cajétan, il Gaetano, who uses commentary to bring order to thought and discourse. Bruno Pinchard links commentary, practiced by Cajétan, to the essay. The latter uses analogy to bring order to commentary and thus give life to words. Montaigne explores being through the self, and his discourse achieves order as he becomes the subject of his writing.

Montaigne converses with his fellow humanists on legal findings and perplexities as well as on the role of the possible in legal findings, a subject explored by Oliver Guerrier, or on the tension between Stoic and skeptical concepts of law. Katherine Almquist focuses on Montaigne's belief that law is based not on universals but on the particular adaptation of law to the local context. Philippe Desan explores Montaigne's practice of doubting, a practice rooted in the particular context and never established as a system, since the essayist had discovered in his legal career that law is grounded not in complex systems but in local custom.

Approaches to religious dogma unite the papers of the third section. Jean-Luis Vieillard-Baron articulates the domain to which Montaigne applies his skepti-cism — not to his faith, a gift from God, but to simple belief, belief in the strength of customs, in local practices, and in his neighbors. The good faith with which he writes his essays and a faith undermined by the ravages of incivility...